Time for Carville’s Razor?

James Carville is famous for the slogan that helped elect Bill Clinton in 1992: “It’s the economy, stupid!” You’d think there’d be a few of the old posters with this slogan from the famous Clinton campaign war room floating around someone’s flooded basement that the Obama people could dust off. Of course, what I’m calling “Carville’s Razor” would just as likely nick the Obama campaign’s jugular vein. So they’ll try to change the subject.
My pal Steve Moore of the Wall Street Journal points out the dismal dimensions of the current economic cycle, which he and others mockingly call “Recovery Bummer”:

The standard response from Obama apologists is that recession of 2008 and 2009 was different because, as former Clinton administration economist Robert Shapiro puts it, “this was a financial crisis, and these take longer to recover from.” In fact, in most cases, the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery to make up for lost ground.
That was what Ronald Reagan’s critics said when the U.S. economy soared during 1983 and 1984 with quarterly growth numbers exceeding 7%. At the time, liberal Keynesians yawned and declared the good times nothing more than a normal snapback from the deep recession.

The chart below, produced by the Joint Economic Committee, tells the story.

Meanwhile, if you want to see where there is real job growth occurring, forget “green” jobs. Turns out old-fashioned “brown jobs” are where the action is. Nine of the 11 fastest-growing job sectors right now are drilling-related. Forget red and blue states in the next election. The real divide might be between fossil fuels states and the states still trying to break wind for their energy and economy.